An incubator includes a newborn infant container which provides a proper physiological environment for a newborn infant who cannot regulate his/her body temperature by himself/herself. Substantially the entire areas of the side surfaces and top surface of the newborn infant container are formed from a transparent material to allow to visually recognize a newborn infant in the newborn infant container from outside. This incubator is configured to control humidity and oxygen concentration as well as temperature in this newborn infant container. In some cases, a doctor, a nurse or the like needs to provide some treatment for a newborn infant in the newborn infant container. In order to provide relatively easy treatments, the newborn infant container is provided with hand insertion windows in several side surfaces of the newborn infant container, hand insertion doors which pivot to open and close the hand insertion windows, and latch mechanisms of holding the hand insertion doors at the closed positions.
In general, to maintain a proper physiological environment for a newborn infant in the newborn infant container, the hand insertion windows are closed by the hand insertion doors and are held at the closed positions by the latch mechanisms. When providing treatment for a newborn infant, however, it is necessary to open the hand insertion windows by making the hand insertion doors pivot from the closed positions to the open positions. In some cases, a person who provides treatments holds a medical instrument, medicine and the like with his/her both hands, and needs to prevent the both sterile hands from being contaminated. Under the circumstances, a conventional incubator (for example, EP 038207A2 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2-19855 to be referred to as patent literatures 1 and 2) includes unlatching members for unlatching latching mechanisms, which allow to easily open the hand insertion windows by only pressing the members with body parts such as the elbows other than the hands in a direction perpendicular to the side surface of the newborn infant container.
According to the above conventional incubator, however, although the hand insertion doors are nearly in contact with the latch mechanisms, the doors are not held at the closed position. For this reason, the hand insertion windows may be imperfectly closed. If the hand insertion windows are opened or imperfectly closed while a newborn infant is accommodated, the newborn infant container loses the proper physiological environment for the newborn infant. This may affect the physical condition of the newborn infant.
In addition, the above conventional incubator allows the hand insertion doors which are not held at the closed position by the latch mechanisms to freely pivot, and causes the latch mechanisms to abruptly move due to a biasing force when holding the hand insertion doors at the closed positions. This may cause the hand insertion doors and the latch mechanisms to collide with other portions of the incubator. The sound and vibration generated by the impact of this collision may stress the newborn infant in the newborn infant container. This may also affect the physical condition of the newborn infant.
A pair of hand insertion windows is provided in each of the left and right side surfaces of the newborn infant container of the incubator so as to be symmetric, in the lateral direction, about the middle position between the hand insertion windows. Hand insertion doors provided for these hand insertion windows are supported to be respectively pivotal about the front end side and rear end side of each side surface. Each pair of hand insertion doors juxtaposed laterally is configured to open like hinged double doors. This allows to access the newborn infant inside the container through the hand insertion windows without hindrance by the hand insertion doors. In this case, latch mechanisms are respectively provided at the right end of the hand insertion door attached to the left side of each side surface of the newborn infant container and the left end of the hand insertion door attached to the right side of the side surface. The latch mechanisms are attached to each surface so as to be symmetrical about the middle position in the lateral direction. The latch mechanisms therefore have structures symmetrical with each other in the lateral direction and substantially the same function. However, they need to be prepared as different components. This inevitably increases the number of types of components of the latch mechanisms of the left and right doors, and hence increases the cost.